Into the Sun
by carlygal
Summary: John mourns after Gilina's death. Spoilers for up to The Hidden Memory season one


** INTO THE SUN**

**Summary:** Crichton struggles with his guilt after Gilina dies.  
**Rating:** G  
**Author Notes:** Set after Nerve/The Hidden Memory, but before Bone to be Wild. The quote is from Wilfred Owen – if you don't know it, go find the whole poem, and everything by him.

_Move him into the sun –_

_Gently its touch awoke him once_

Strangely enough he can see himself as though he's up on the ceiling somewhere he can see himself lying over Gilina his live body lying over her dead one. And she's cool and he knows that she just needs to be warmed up and if his body won't do it then it needs something else. Space is cold. They're floating in a cold place nowhere near a sun or an earth or anything bright. Moya can't move, she's just had her baby, she's broken and neither she or the child can starburst. So there has to be another way to give Gilina the warmth she needs. He thinks vaguely of the wormhole knowledge that Scorpius says lies inside his mind. If he could access it then he'd create a wormhole and bring her body onto earth and she'd live in that sort of sunshine. But he can't link two thoughts together for more than a breath and he thinks that it's because of the chair and he thinks that he doesn't mind because he's killed someone and she needs to be warm to live.

There was a kitten once, there was a cat, his cat, and it had kittens, when he was just a little boy. He doesn't remember the story well because he was such a little boy. But his cat had kittens and he found them and he picked up one of the little mewling things and took it to find his mother. And it was dead in his hands and he cried, but his mother said the kitty-cat was cold, and it needed its mother's warm body, and she went with him and took it back. But then they left the cat, and now Crichton doesn't know, and his mother is dead now so he can't ask her, if the kitten had been dead and his mother had fibbed to comfort him, or whether it had been alive and she was right, it just needed the warmth, it just needed warmth to survive.

Now from up on the ceiling he sees that Aeryn has come into the room. She had looked healthy and beautiful and entirely perfect when she'd come into his cell to rescue him, he'd called her the radiant Aeryn Sun, she'd looked bright and glowing and the loveliest thing he'd seen. Now from the ceiling he sees that she's still ill, that Gilina was right, Aeryn needed days of bed-rest to be all right again, that she's bent slightly to one side, just slightly, walking a little oddly to protect that part of her which hurts, a part of her body he knows nothing about. She'd coughed up blood that wasn't exactly blood and she'd thrown up and she'd been pale and freezing, freezing cold. And then she'd come into his cell with her face shining and she'd been warm again.

So now he lifts up a hand and brings her over to lie with him on Gilina because she's cold and he's cold and Aeryn is the warmest thing on Moya. But it isn't enough because Gilina's getting colder, he can feel her dying, though she's dead, he remembers she's dead. And Aeryn kneeling beside Gilina knows that she's dead. She died for me, Aeryn says, and Crichton says, no no, she died for me.

A little time later and she's still dead and he's kneeling on the floor beside her and now Zhaan's in the room as well and D'Argo and they're talking about what to do about the body. And he wants them to go and talk about it somewhere else where Gilina can't hear because he's still trying to think about how to warm her and he can't think of two things at the same time, he thinks it's because of the chair. And then they do leave and Aeryn comes back and he didn't realise she'd left the room anyway. She holds his hand and he begins to laugh because he remembers how they said goodbye.

You thought you'd die and you thought I'd die and we didn't die but Gilina died, he says to her. I didn't think we'd die, I didn't think Gilina would die, and there with our goodbye we killed her, it stayed on our lips for all that time, and she saw it and she died.

And from the ceiling he sees Aeryn trying to smile at him in the way that he knows which means she doesn't understand what he is saying, but a little more frightened because she understands the words but she thinks he's gone mad. And she holds his hands and says that Peacekeepers, when they die, they aren't buried in the ground, they're sent into space, and that's where Gilina needs to go. But she doesn't understand that it's cold there, too cold, all alone in space, and she needs the warmth. When he tries to say it she gives him the same small smile and so he drops her hand because farewell, goodbye, cold, warm, none of it works anymore, it's not the right language, they're not the right words. And she gets up stiffly, putting the weight onto her right arm, and suddenly presses down with her finger onto his swollen lip that Crais broke with his fist, and he comes straight down from the ceiling and finds himself there next to her on the floor.

Gilina's dead in front of him. Aeryn's hurt beside him. He's so stiff and sore that even blinking gives him pain. He thinks that he never did kill anything except for that kitten until he came out into space and now he doesn't even know how many people are dead because of him. Then Aeryn says something back to him and he realises that he said the last part aloud. She asked him what was a kitten. He tells her that it's something warm and soft and without any protection. He tells her again that Gilina is cold.

A little time later Aeryn comes back and he realises again that he didn't know that she'd left. She picks up Gilina's body in her arms and she sags a little but then stands up straight. He tries to pull himself up three times before he's able to do it. He faces her and asks her what she's doing. I'm taking her to the sun, Aeryn tells him. Pilot says there's a sun not far away. We'll go in the prowler because Moya can't move.

So they climb into Aeryn's prowler and Gilina's in a box and they fly into cold space and he's shaking with it, freezing with it, and then it's brighter, somehow, and there's something like a star, and Aeryn tells him that if they let Gilina go, she'll be pulled into the warmth. He lets her go. He lets her go.

It's cold on the way back to Moya. Aeryn's silent in front of him, guiding the prowler towards the leviathan, ensuring no one from the Gammak base can see them. He tries to follow a thought backwards that Gilina died because of him and he died because of Aeryn and Aeryn died because of him and all the way back to the goodbye handshake which meant, we're both going to die, we're both going to die. And then finally he remembers that they're both alive and he puts a hand on Aeryn's shoulder in front of him and she jumps and then jerks her head around to look at him, and there is the warmth right there in her eyes. It's not quite so cold any more. She touches his lip again, where it hurts, and he realises the goodbye that was there has gone.

"The radiant Aeryn Sun," he says, remembering. "Aeryn, we can't say goodbye again."

"We didn't say goodbye," she reminds him, "we said, good luck."

"We can't say goodbye again," he tells her insistently, and he looks at the warmth in her eyes.

"All right, Crichton," she says, humouring him, and lands the prowler in Moya, and brings them both on board.


End file.
